SPOILER ALERT The kindest thing I can say about this film is it's trying hard to be many things on many levels. At least it's trying - very, at times, as I found out by the end.
The story starts with an overturned car on a bridge and the dying passengers groaning in agony. The paramedics on the scene turn out to be imposters more concerned with removing the bodies altogether but vanish quickly when the real emergency services arrive - a compelling start.
We turn to a mother (Madeleine Stowe) driving her teenage daughter home one night; they witness the carnage by the roadside and are waved along by police. Their relationship is tense and uneasy, culminating in a bitter argument in a truck stop and the girl flounces off in a huff. Minutes later the distraught mother sees her daughter climbing into a winnebago driven by the spooky couple seen hanging around at the earlier car crash - and so begins the cat and mouse hunt for the return of the ungrateful wench back to Stowe.
The idea in principle is excellent, the cinematography stylish, the editing intelligent, the soundtrack appropriately moody and atmospheric, the acting accomplished most of the time. It's just a shame the plot disintegrates an hour into the picture; the audience were sniggering by the end as the seemingly invincible Stowe single-handedly takes on a chemical plant, a cult of complete loonies and a variety of incendiary devices without a second thought. Her transformation from a pill-popping, overwrought nag of a mother to Lara Croft is laughable, especially since she suffers a serious car accident in the middle of all this, only to walk away with a blob of stage makeup at her temple, and a renewed commitment to retrieve her kid from the moonies.
Towards the end the subtext also questions the morality of abortion, which is for a start completely at odds with the amoral lifestyle of the character posing the question, but moreover a weird position to take in a self-consciously arty film like this, where the pro-life/freedom of choice issue is utterly irrelevant. A nihilistic film like this has no point anyway, so why ruin the climax with unconvincing pro-life rhetoric?
The cult's enigmatic leader possesses an eery knowledge of Stowe's past which again is inexplicable and comes too late in the film to be examined properly - more of this might have saved the film's failing integrity. By the time he gets around to condemning her for her attempted termination (at the same time as cutting his own tongue with a razor blade and opening the boot of a car to reveal the poor girl's dead father lying there - you see my point) the film's nearly over and there's no opportunity to delve further. I'm being too kind; at this point the movie had decended into total farce and I'd lost my concentration anyway.
The nauseating happy-ever-after ending reminded me of so many Stephen King novels where the author has set the scene so brilliantly he ties himself up in complete knots and the resulting ending's a huge disappointment.
What a pity a film with so many strengths and so much potential fell at the first hurdle.
The story starts with an overturned car on a bridge and the dying passengers groaning in agony. The paramedics on the scene turn out to be imposters more concerned with removing the bodies altogether but vanish quickly when the real emergency services arrive - a compelling start.
We turn to a mother (Madeleine Stowe) driving her teenage daughter home one night; they witness the carnage by the roadside and are waved along by police. Their relationship is tense and uneasy, culminating in a bitter argument in a truck stop and the girl flounces off in a huff. Minutes later the distraught mother sees her daughter climbing into a winnebago driven by the spooky couple seen hanging around at the earlier car crash - and so begins the cat and mouse hunt for the return of the ungrateful wench back to Stowe.
The idea in principle is excellent, the cinematography stylish, the editing intelligent, the soundtrack appropriately moody and atmospheric, the acting accomplished most of the time. It's just a shame the plot disintegrates an hour into the picture; the audience were sniggering by the end as the seemingly invincible Stowe single-handedly takes on a chemical plant, a cult of complete loonies and a variety of incendiary devices without a second thought. Her transformation from a pill-popping, overwrought nag of a mother to Lara Croft is laughable, especially since she suffers a serious car accident in the middle of all this, only to walk away with a blob of stage makeup at her temple, and a renewed commitment to retrieve her kid from the moonies.
Towards the end the subtext also questions the morality of abortion, which is for a start completely at odds with the amoral lifestyle of the character posing the question, but moreover a weird position to take in a self-consciously arty film like this, where the pro-life/freedom of choice issue is utterly irrelevant. A nihilistic film like this has no point anyway, so why ruin the climax with unconvincing pro-life rhetoric?
The cult's enigmatic leader possesses an eery knowledge of Stowe's past which again is inexplicable and comes too late in the film to be examined properly - more of this might have saved the film's failing integrity. By the time he gets around to condemning her for her attempted termination (at the same time as cutting his own tongue with a razor blade and opening the boot of a car to reveal the poor girl's dead father lying there - you see my point) the film's nearly over and there's no opportunity to delve further. I'm being too kind; at this point the movie had decended into total farce and I'd lost my concentration anyway.
The nauseating happy-ever-after ending reminded me of so many Stephen King novels where the author has set the scene so brilliantly he ties himself up in complete knots and the resulting ending's a huge disappointment.
What a pity a film with so many strengths and so much potential fell at the first hurdle.